They did not have to turn away any anxious fans yesterday morning when the City Council’s first all-day Strategic Planning Retreat opened in the lobby of the Kirk Douglas Theatre.

Three persons formed the audience when Mayor Jim Clarke, flanked by department heads, city staffers and City Manager John Nachbar, opened the nine-hour session.

Former Councilman Andy Weissman stayed for the first hour. Rick Tuttle and Paul Ehrlich, familiar to Council regulars, eventually commented but mostly were silent.

This was a deeply serious workday for the five Council members.

But first, they wanted to get personal.

The morning’s opening question was, Who inspired you in your life, and perhaps was responsible for you ending up at a City Council desk in Culver City?

For Mayor Clarke, it was President John F. Kennedy, assassinated on a November morning in 1963 in Dallas, three years before Northern California native Jim Clarke graduated from Pleasant Hill High School.

As a teenager, Mr. Clarke said Mr. Kennedy’s “commitment to public service and his exuberance inspired me.

“After I decided that I couldn’t be a professional baseball player, I thought I would be president of the United States.

“But I settled for the best job there is – being on the City Council and being the mayor.”